


A Statistically Inconclusive Sample

by Sixthlight



Series: A Few Years Later [7]
Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Established Relationship, Future Fic, Gen, M/M, Shovel Talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-05
Updated: 2015-02-05
Packaged: 2018-03-10 15:59:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3296282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sixthlight/pseuds/Sixthlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thomas Nightingale had two apprentices, once upon a time; the consequences are still rebounding a decade later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Statistically Inconclusive Sample

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a direct follow-on to [Inappropriate Conduct](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3211124), and will make pretty much no sense if you don't read that first.

After Peter’s little stunt with Lesley at that pub – but no, Thomas corrected himself as soon as he thought it. It hadn’t been a stunt, or even ill-considered. Peter had gone in to meet her armed and cautious, and he concurred that Lesley had not expected to see Peter there. He had considered when he’d gone after Peter that it was perhaps intended to draw both he and Peter away from the Folly, to leave it unprotected…but that seemed unlikely. There was little she might seek to find here that she could achieve even with both of them away from the building, at least in the time it would have given her.

Thomas was reasonably certain Lesley didn’t bear Peter any particular ill-will, might even consider him a friend still, but in general it was not a theory he preferred to put to any practical test. Peter’s _motivation_ for speaking with her he found – understandable. He wasn’t sure why Peter felt he owed Lesley anything, after all this time. Her path had been laid for her before Peter had even known about ghosts, or magic, or anything else, when Henry Pyke and Punch had _sequestered_ her, in Abdul’s terminology, that January night long ago. Peter had been playing catch-up ever since. But there were some friends, Thomas knew – he’d had the like once – who you would do anything for, to whom you felt a debt that nothing could repay. Peter didn’t let it cloud his assessment of the dangers Lesley presented, or stop him doing his job. But there it was, nonetheless.

It was the aftermath that was likely to prove a problem. Thomas had no ethical qualms about his current relationship with Peter, who had not been his apprentice for some time. His own willingness to change the nature of their relationship had surprised him now and again, until he’d realised – when he’d been in hospital briefly for a broken leg, as it happened – that all this time he’d been training Peter to _replace_ him. In the event of his own death, most likely in the course of his duties, as old age wasn’t doing the trick. And much to his surprise both of them had gotten through Peter’s training, and a number of encounters that should have killed one or the other of them – that confrontation with the Faceless Man had come the closest of anything, still – and he was still here, and so was Peter. But you couldn’t train someone to be able to replace you, and reach the point where you were satisfied they _could_ do so, without regarding them as an equal. Thomas was still ultimately responsible for the Folly, but the way he and Peter operated these days involved a lot fewer orders and a lot more discussion. No – he wasn’t worried about Peter.

But it _wasn’t_ fair to – he couldn’t say they’d _flaunted_ it, they’d been perfectly discreet, and Molly had forgiven them for that thing in the library eventually – to let it come to the attention of the apprentices. For all Peter’s assurances that they would rather just forget the whole thing, it couldn’t help but colour their interactions with both Peter and himself. There was no help for it now, of course, but Thomas wished rather fervently they’d both had better sense than to kiss in the garage, of all places, where anyone might walk in at any moment.

Supper that evening was unusually quiet. Abigail kept glaring at him and Peter, whichever one happened to be in her line of sight, as if they were going to commit some indiscretion at the table. Malini wouldn’t meet their eyes. Matthew wore a slight frown, as if trying to determine whether he’d heard something accurately. Annie was doing her best to keep up light conversation, but her upbeat tones were just a little forced.

It was possibly the most awkward meal Thomas had had the displeasure of sitting through since the last time he’d been to a Metropolitan Police dinner – bother Peter for ever talking him into it, anyway - and been seated across from Alexander Seawoll. And at least Seawoll had just pointedly ignored him.

Peter’s predictions did come true in one other fashion; all the apprentices were feeling the effects of alcohol the next morning, even Abigail. Especially Abigail, apparently, who undoubtedly shared the usual distaste for having adults one had known as a child or adolescent suddenly put in a romantic context. Thomas imagined his own reaction had he come across any of his masters from Casterbrook in a similar position, and felt that really she was bearing up rather well.

He was minded to just overlook their mild incapacitation, considering that they were all practicing as usual with no _audible_ complaints. It wouldn’t do for them to be making a habit of it but sometimes you had to let these things go.

Especially when you’d been partially responsible for driving them to drink in the first place.

*

And, of course, Thomas had forgotten one other factor in all this excitement – Lesley May. They’d never mentioned her to the new apprentices. The last time either Peter or her had seen her had been the incident that had ended in a broken wrist for Peter, nearly two years ago. Abigail knew her, of course, but the others…Lesley was always a thorny topic, and it had seemed sufficient for them to know there were other Newtonian practitioners out there, outside and often at odds with the Folly. There would be time for details later.

These days coordinating the business of the Folly required rather more effort than conversations over supper, assuming that all of them showed up for supper on any given day, so Thomas had – with some reluctance, as it had been a _long_ time since he’d been required to do this sort of thing – instituted a weekly meeting. They could generally dispense with the whole thing in well under an hour, as long as no-one got side-tracked – and by ‘anyone’ he chiefly meant Peter. Both the usual brevity and semi-formality of the meeting would make it an opportune time to discuss the matter of Lesley, since discussed it had to be.

The meeting was conducted in the mundane library, which had tables and chairs and that whiteboard Peter had found somewhere – Thomas couldn’t remember him bringing it into the building but he must have, since they were certainly a post-war invention. It was currently divided up into several segments for the cases they were currently working on and other things of note. The newest item was in Peter’s blocky script, in the upper right-hand corner, SAFETY RE-TRAINING @ HENDON: ABIGAIL & MATTHEW 18TH JULY. Thomas was peripherally _aware_ of the Met’s requirements for continuing training, but as no-one ever tried to apply it to him, he let Peter manage the details.

It was mid-morning on a Monday, after practice but before anyone had to go out for other things. Molly had provided them with biscuits and coffee and a pot of tea – in particular, Malini cheerfully refused to drink coffee, or rather _Molly’s_ coffee, though Thomas would never upset Molly by bringing that detail to her attention.

They breezed through the usual details in under half an hour. Thomas refused to be bogged down with physical agendas but since he was running the meeting, he could keep it tied to his mental one. And the last thing on it was Lesley May. He’d given Peter a heads-up beforehand; it was going to be awkward enough without catching him flatfooted.

“Finally,” Thomas said, “we need to talk about a former apprentice.”

Abigail regarded him steadily; she knew who they meant, of course. Malini, who’d met Lesley, had her lips parted as if on an unspoken thought. Matthew and Annie were merely blank.

“One of that bunch from Oxford?” Matthew asked. “The, er – the Little Crocodiles?”

“From the Folly,” Peter said.

“But…” Matthew did some mental arithmetic. “Aren’t they all dead? I thought the last apprentices before you were before the Second World War.”

“There are a very few survivors of the pre-war mob, although they’re all rather frail by now,” Thomas told him. “But no – before Abigail joined us here, and the rest of you, I had one other apprentice in the, ah, modern era of this institution. Malini met her last week.”

Malini sat up straighter. “That woman in the mask – Lesley? I _thought_ so!”

“How’d you know?” Abigail asked curiously.

“Peter said she was a wizard,” said Malini, “and I asked if she’d been trained outside the Folly, and she said – mostly.”

“She was only here about six months,” Peter put in. “A little less, even.”

“What…happened to her?” asked Annie. “Did she quit?”

“She bloody ran off with the Faceless Man, didn’t she?” said Abigail, and there was more bitterness in her tone than Thomas would have expected. Abigail had liked Lesley, he thought. Those sorts of betrayals stung much more deeply when you were young. “And she’s still out there doing her Darth Vader impression.”

“Nah,” Peter said. “More like Carmen Sandiego. Lesley’s not taking orders from anyone, these days.”

“But I thought she was your friend?” Malini said, half a question. “You went and had a drink with her.”

Peter rocked his hand in a so-so motion. “She _quit_ by tasering me in the back while I was in the middle of arresting someone, so not a friend, exactly. Lesley is…the opposition. We can’t bring her in because there isn’t a prison in this country that’d keep her, and that doesn’t leave a lot of options. So she doesn’t do anything we’d _have_ to come after her for and we don’t go looking.”

“You _knew_ about this?” Annie asked Abigail, frowning doubtfully.

Abigail shrugged. “Well, yeah. I’d graduated to bothering these guys -” she waved a hand at Thomas and Peter “about ghosts and stuff before she left. But it wasn’t – I mean, far as I know no-one had run into her for what, two years? Three? This isn’t a Saturday morning TV show, we’re not having a face-off with her every week.”

“Broke my wrist the last time,” Peter said neutrally. “That’s much more in the line of things than drinks in the pub. At least for the last while.”

“Lesley May is a trained practitioner and extremely dangerous,” Thomas broke in on this otherwise rather fascinating interchange. “If any of you see her – especially you, Abigail – you are to leave the scene and contact either Peter or myself as soon as possible. She was a sworn constable when she – left, so there’s an extensive DPS report into her actions. I believe you’ve all been emailed a copy.” He’d asked Peter to take care of that, before the meeting. “Read it.”

“Is there a picture?” asked Matthew.

“She had a mask on,” Malini said. “It looked like it wasn’t optional, either.”

“Her face fell off,” Peter said, flatly. “You’re not going to have trouble spotting her. Like Nightingale says, likely you won’t, but since we’ve crossed paths again you need to know what to do if you do.”

“Are there any further questions?” Thomas said, to draw things to a close. He hoped there wouldn’t be.

“Why?” asked Annie, simply. “What’s she got against the Folly? Why would she – run off like that?”

“Magic took her face away,” Thomas said. “She hoped that magic could restore it. When she realised that I couldn’t – she turned to other options.”

“But she was still wearing that mask,” Malini said. “So she never got it back?”

“Magic doesn’t work that way,” Peter said, sounding weary. “We’re all stuck with the laws of physics, yeah? If it pulverises every bone in your face, they stay fucking pulverised. Modern medicine did more for her than magic ever could. At least – the kind of magic we can do. Which you should all take as a lesson, mind.”

Lesley had gone seeking her face, her _identity_ , and found – a great many things, Thomas rather thought. Everything except what she’d gone looking for. It hadn’t been that kind of story. Not for Lesley.

“But, um, sir, don’t take this the wrong way,” Annie said carefully, “there’s not anything – personal?”

“Except that she, did I mention this, _tasered me in the back_?” Peter snapped back. “Because that was a _tiny_ bit personal.”

“ _No_ ,” Thomas said, sternly, before Peter could get – side-tracked. “No. This is not, as Abigail so aptly observed, a fictional story. Lesley is not trying to avenge some great injustice done to her, we’re not leaving anything out. She made some poor choices and she is living with the consequences of them, and so are we. It’s the nature of consequences.”

“Well, it’s a pity,” said Matthew, unexpectedly. “If it _was_ a Saturday morning cartoon, we wouldn’t have to worry so much about the laws of physics.”

*

Thomas had thought that would be the end of it, until his mobile phone started ringing later that day. He must have forgotten to turn it off when he’d come into the main building; if he didn’t answer it, it would forward to the main telephone in the atrium. But as it was already on he might as well answer it where he was, so he pulled it out. The display said _Blocked ID_. Probably one of the police stations; they often displayed that way.

“Hello, Thomas,” said a female voice, and when he realised it was Lesley his fingers clenched around the phone. He got up and began to walk, where, he wasn’t sure; he just couldn’t take this call and stay still.

“Lesley,” he said. “This is unexpected.”

Thomas had exchanged perhaps thirty words with her over the last nine years, depending upon whether you counted written forms of communication or not. When it came to Lesley May his overriding emotions, if he let himself think on it too long, were anger and guilt. Anger, because she had betrayed them, in full knowledge of what she was doing and what the man she was betraying them to was capable of. Peter had never been into the depths of that club in Soho, nor had Lesley, but they’d had some idea of how bad it was, even back then – as much of an idea as anyone needed. Thomas had been in there. He knew _precisely_. There were areas of grey in their job, compromises that had to be made. He thought of young Neckinger, drowning a man on dry land, for all he’d been a murderer. But knowing what she had known…Lesley had not so much burned her bridges with him as detonated them with high explosives. Thomas liked to think he was not a man for grudges, but this was something that would never be made right. And yet might still need to be laid aside, one day, for the job.

And guilt, nonetheless, for what had been done to her, for what he had failed to prevent, for the idea that he had somehow been so deficient as a master, a teacher, a mentor, that the route she had taken had seemed like a bearable alternative. It was a pointless and damaging emotion, but it would never quite be made right, either. Had there been some way he could have helped her which he hadn’t thought of? Something he might have said or done that would have changed her mind? Some moment where she might have been turned aside that he had failed to see? He hadn’t been Peter, lost in the thicket of his own emotions where Lesley was concerned. He should have been able to see clearly what ate at her, what she might be driven to. What she was capable of - _everything_ she was capable of. He should have.

Those were the sort of questions that led to him doing paperwork at three am, along with questions like how Woodville-Gentle had managed to operate that club in Soho under his nose and if he could have somehow won the argument about bombing Ettersberg. But there had been a lot of those questions over the years, and a lot of sleepless nights. And doubtless there would be more. A consequence of the job.

“I’m sure it is,” Lesley said in his ear. “This is a burner phone and I’m in Camden Market, by the way, so don’t feel pressured to try tracking it.” Of course, both of those things could be lies, but Thomas rather thought they weren’t. “I had a nice chat with Peter the other day – was that you, coming to pick him up?”

“So Peter told me,” Thomas said, ignoring her question. “Is there a reason for this call?”

The right thing to do would be to draw her out, keep her talking; they were never going to be able to arrest Lesley and jail her, but they might neutralise her, perhaps. At the least it was wise to have some idea of what her plans might be, if there was anything they should be trying to prevent. But Lesley knew all of that as well as he did, and Thomas simply didn’t have the patience for it. That was Peter’s skill, the delicate art of negotiation. Thomas could do it when he had to but with Lesley, it was pointless. It was always pointless.

“Nah, just fancied a chat,” Lesley said. “Like I said – it was nice to see Peter. He was polite, even. But he told me something and I have to say, Thomas, it perplexed me a little. You and him? Really?”

She used his first name because before that it had been _sir_ , or _boss_ , and those wouldn’t do. Calling him _Nightingale_ to his face, or rather ear, didn’t grant her the same petty leverage, the same implication of familiarity. In her voice his first name sounded – peculiarly, considering – rather like it did when Alexander Seawoll said it. She had been Seawoll’s golden girl, of course, before. Some things you learned and never forgot.

“It perplexed you, did it?” Thomas parried. Nothing she hadn’t already said. Give no information away.

“He’s such an idiot when he falls in love with people,” said Lesley, and it was so perfectly genuine, half-affectionate and half-despairing, that Thomas nearly stopped breathing. “I mean, he was when he couldn’t work up the courage to ask me out. God. I don’t think I’d ever have said yes but it doesn’t make any difference now, does it. But you – of all the people. Then again, this is Peter we’re talking about. Never had a stupid idea he didn’t follow through on wholeheartedly.”

She paused. Thomas racked his brain for something to say and came up with nothing, nothing whatsoever.

“Oh, I just thought of something,” she said, sounding amused now. “I hope the DPS aren’t still tapping your phones to try and pin me down. I don’t mean to do you _that_ sort of bad turn. Anyway, my point is – this is Peter, and for some reason he’s decided what he wants is you. So don’t make him regret it, yeah?”

“Lesley,” Thomas said, bewildered, “are you calling to threaten me with retribution if I break his heart?”

“Well _someone_ has to,” she snapped. “Bev would, but that’s more complicated, isn’t it? So yeah. Don’t fuck this up. I told him he could do better than you and he could, but he doesn’t think so. So don’t let all your stiff-upper-lip Edwardian-era bullshit ruin this, okay?”

Thomas still couldn’t think of a single thing to say to this.

“You hear me?” she pressed.

He sighed. “I hear you.” _This is ridiculous_ , he didn’t add. It wouldn’t help.

“Oh, look,” she said, now a little smug. “And here Peter was telling me the other day he thought you’d need another couple of decades to ever talk to me, and we’ve had a proper conversation. I suppose something good’s come out of this after all.”

Thomas would have put the number closer to three decades, or never, or tomorrow, depending upon the circumstances, but Peter hadn’t asked him directly. “Don’t make us have to come and find you, Lesley.”

“You’re starting to sound like each other,” she said. “So I’ll tell you what I told him. No promises.”

The line went dead. As, about ten seconds later, did his phone. Thomas wondered, and then remembered the teaching lab was right above the general library. Someone must be practicing. Well, that was his own fault, for having his phone on in the main building.

He sighed, and went to go see who was in the lab. It might be a distraction. 

*

It was Malini; she had a ball of water moving around the lab in steady circles. When Thomas knocked on the open door, she didn’t physically flinch, but the water-sphere dropped from where it had been hovering and splattered over the bench below.

“Argh,” she said. She turned and saw Thomas. “Oh – sir.”

“You mustn’t let interruptions like that destroy your hold on the _forma_ ,” Thomas said. “Do it again.”

She held out her hand, and a ball of water slowly formed.

“I wanted to apologise, sir,” she said clearly, not looking at Thomas, but at the spell. Well, that was to be expected, although one shouldn’t _have_ to look to know what one was doing with a first or second-order spell like this, really just a tool for practice. But that took time, as well. Thomas didn’t feel the cold breath of time on his neck with these young people as he once had with Peter, but they weren’t children, as he had been at their stage of magical education. They were adults, with difficult, sometimes dangerous jobs, and every inch of progress they made was a relief.

“I can’t think of anything in particular you need to apologise for.”

“For getting in a tizzy the other day,” she said. The water-sphere flattened a little, as if considering dissolution, then stabilised. It never stopped moving, though. “I shouldn’t have said anything to Abigail, or – anyone. Sorry.” Her skin was too dark to show a blush, but the way she looked away from him was particularly fixed.

It wasn’t what Thomas had expected. “With the knowledge you had at the time, you did the right thing.”

He’d give a great deal to not be having this conversation at _all_ , but he did owe Malini the truth – she’d seen her senior officers in what appeared to be deeply uncharacteristic behaviour. In the world she now lived in, it _might_ have been a warning sign, or an emergency. She’d gone straight to Abigail, who while not so much further along than the others in practicing magic, had many more years of exposure to the _world_ of magic. It had been the right thing to do.

“ _Can_ magic make you do – things you wouldn’t – like that?” she asked. “I know about _seducere_ , I remember meeting Mama Thames, but that’s more – that’s not – it’s just when you’re around them; it doesn’t last.”

“Yes and no,” Thomas said, thinking of Peter’s first visit to Tyburn. She’d reached out and made him come all the way to her without ever having laid eyes on him. Or Richard Lewis, throwing himself under a train. “Especially where human practitioners are concerned, _seducere_ is a very difficult and very chancy technique; I’ve never tried it myself. I believe the working thesis is that it affects suggestibility – like drugging someone.”

Peter and Abdul still had that on their list of experiments to perform, someday. The holdup was a lack of test subjects who were simultaneously aware of _seducere,_ as they would have to be to consent to such an experiment, and sufficiently susceptible to it for the experiment to work. Thomas rather wondered if they might try it with the apprentices…but as tempting as it was, that really wasn’t ethical; they would doubtless feel obliged to participate whether they wanted to or not. Abdul had been driven to some sarcasm about it. Thomas liked to make these suggestions now and again. It was obscurely reassuring when Peter or Abdul or both explained why he was wrong and possibly subject to mild insanity. It meant they still had their priorities in order.

“But it can’t make you do things you really don’t want to?”

“I’ve seen it used to make someone commit suicide,” Thomas said. “When we investigated further the victim was under considerable strain. But not suicidal. So – it is possible. Although merely being a magical practitioner provides some resistance; the more often you’re exposed to it, the weaker the effect is, no matter the source. As I’m sure you’ve discovered with the Rivers.”

“God,” Malini said. “That’s awful.”

“Yes, it is. And it _is_ a possibility you should keep in mind, in your investigations. But – not in this _particular_ circumstance. As I said, merely being a practitioner helps, and experience offers its own protection. It would take a _very_ strong glamour to affect either Peter or myself, especially at a distance.”

And if Thomas had anything to say about it, it wasn’t a circumstance that was ever going to happen again…where there was the slightest chance of Malini or one of the other apprentices seeing it.

“Right. Okay.” She shuffled her feet. “And now…we can never speak of this again?”

“Quite,” Thomas said, and knew he sounded more relieved than he should. Malini’s globe of water was still circling the lab. “And since you’re capable of carrying on a conversation and this spell at the same time – you should try duplicating _aqua_ , and moving two of them.”

“Okay, sir,” Malini said, more cheerfully – she liked a challenge – and a second sphere of water appeared.

Thomas left before she could think of any more uncomfortable topics to bring up.

*

“I can’t believe you fried your phone again,” Peter said. He was at Belgravia speaking with Guleed; Thomas had taken the call in the atrium, or rather Molly had answered it and then come and found him.

“I got an unexpected call when I was in the main building,” Thomas told him. “And since I don’t expect my mobile phone to also be a miniature computer, it’s rather less of a problem. I’ll replace it soon enough.”

Peter sighed. “There’s a spare in the tech cave.”

“Is there really?” said Thomas, who hadn’t known.

“Yeah. It’s part of my long-term master plan to make sure I can occasionally get hold of you in a crisis.”

“I wasn’t aware we were having a crisis, currently.”

“Give it a few weeks. Anyway, I wanted you to know Belgravia have got an address for Morrow’s sister – you know, the one who was supposed to be out of the country? Me and Annie are going to head over, do an interview, see if anything falls out when we give her a shake.”

“As long as it’s not quite that literal.”

“Not unless the situation calls for it. They’ve also located what they think was the actual murder site. Can you spot me Mal or Matt to check it out? I know Abigail’s doing pastoral outreach today.” That was what Peter called visiting the demi-monde in situations that didn’t involve actual crimes; the Quiet People today, if Thomas recalled correctly.

“That is what they’re there for,” Thomas said. “Give me the address and I’ll point one of them in the right direction.”

Peter gave it to him, and he wrote it down.

“Great,” Peter said. “I think that’s it. I’ll let you know how it goes.”

He hadn’t asked about the unexpected call. Thomas thought about it for a second, and before he could think better of it said “Peter. That call.”

“Um, yeah?” Peter replied, caution creeping into his tone. “Who was it, then?”

“Lesley.”

“It was Le-” Peter said, and cut himself off; doubtless considering who could hear him on his end. “You’re fucking kidding me.”

“Not about this.”

“But _why_?” Peter asked plaintively.

Thomas thought about how to describe it. “She wanted to issue some threats about any potential damage to your emotional well-being.”

“I’m going to _kill_ her,” Peter groaned. “I’m going to – oh, of course she did. Of _course_ she did. She never could leave well enough alone.”

“I think it was intended well,” said Thomas. “In all probability.”

There was a sound not unlike Peter gnashing his teeth. “Fine. Okay. Talk to you later.”

You couldn’t hang up on a mobile phone in the same satisfying way you could with a handset, but Thomas would have wagered Peter wanted to. And all he’d accomplished with that was making Peter upset, as well as himself.

The better part of a decade later, and Lesley could still upend their equilibrium, one way or another. Thomas wondered if either of them would ever reach a point where she couldn’t.

Well. Probably not.

*

Peter was still sulking the next day. Thomas was beginning to regret telling him Lesley had called at all, even though he couldn’t have concealed it. It wouldn’t have been reasonable.

“I can’t _believe_ she did that.”

“You’ve said,” Thomas observed. This really had gotten on Peter’s nerves – they were meant to be doing the final approval on the plans for the renovations to the coach house, which had been Peter’s idea. He’d applied for funding from the Met pool for station renovations, sat through a number of meetings, and generally pushed it forward. Given their current lack of space for devices invented after nineteen-seventy or so, and their inability to extend cables into the main Folly building, it really was a necessity. Thomas was hoping it would let them return the coach house, the first-floor level, to largely recreational usage; he had rather gotten used to the television, and the dual use of the space was less optimal with more people competing for it. If they continued to expand, it would be untenable. And Peter was even more enthusiastic about the idea; that he could be distracted from his pet project meant he was _really_ out of sorts.

“She knows the deal,” Peter went on. “And that was _totally_ out of line.”

“What deal is that?” Thomas asked.

“Just something I told her once,” Peter said vaguely, and appeared to refocus on the paperwork in front of them. “Okay. Anyway. Shutting up now. This all looks the same as the last time we went through it, although this time to completion estimate is a total joke, I hope you know – it’s going to be twice that long at least -”

“ _Peter_ ,” Thomas said.

Peter sighed. “I – it was a joke I made once, okay? It was when she called me, in Herefordshire, back when, and she was giving me crap about Bev, and I told her that if she turned herself in she could run my love life as much as she liked.”

“Well, what if she’d taken you up on it?” Thomas had to ask. “Sounds a bit dangerous.”

“I’d be married to Bev and have five kids?” Peter said, but not like he meant it. “I don’t know. It’s just -” He put down the pen he was holding and leant back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head. “It was a lot easier pretending she didn’t _care_. That if – if she really gave a – if it mattered, she’d come in, she’d walk it back. If it’s that she _does_ , and she still – oh, don’t listen to me.”

“Did you really tell her I needed another few decades to have a civil conversation with her?”

Peter dropped his hands, smiled wryly. “Well – you’ve got another few decades, if you want them. Not everyone has that advantage.”

Another thing they didn’t speak about often, by mutual agreement; Peter wasn’t the boy he’d been when he’d taken the oath, but he’d reached that ambiguous stage where he might have been Thomas’s apparent age, or somewhat younger, or even a little older. One day, Thomas thought – was _reasonably_ certain – he’d start to look older than Thomas for certain; and wouldn’t that be strange? But it hadn’t happened yet, might not for some time. Time had never been much of a friend to Thomas, throwing him around one way or the other. He’d not chase that particular piece of grief. It could come to him, when it would. If it would. Until it did – no matter.

“We will likely never be done with Lesley,” he said aloud. “But we must be able to deal with her, should the situation arise. Lord knows we’ve made stranger bargains. So I will talk to Lesley, if I must, when it’s necessary. You needn’t interpose yourself between us.”

“I wasn’t trying to,” Peter said, and then grimaced. “Well, all right. I was. But it’s not just you and me now – next time it might be Abigail running into her, in the middle of something. Or Mal again, poor kid, or Matt or Annie.”

He looked down at the plans, then up again. “The thing is – I was thinking about it. Makes it worse, doesn’t it? Because I can deal with Lesley. But if she – if any of them got hurt – we’re _responsible_ for them, and then there’s Lesley, and…keeping their hides whole is more important than the idea that Lesley might – whatever. I didn’t realise that, until I walked into her and Mal was right there. Wasn’t thinking about it then. But they took an oath, and so did we.”

“And so did Lesley,” said Thomas. “Once. Though in retrospect I must doubt her sincerity. But you’re quite right. We’ve been relying on the notion that Lesley doesn’t have any great desire to harm either of us; that she’ll avoid doing so if possible. That won’t necessarily hold for people she doesn’t know.”

“ _Exactly_ ,” Peter said. “And then she goes and – this. I just wish she’d pick one or the other.”

“If wishes were horses,” Thomas said, because he knew Lesley May, and he knew Peter – and what Peter meant by that was that he wanted Lesley to apologise, to make amends; he didn’t want her as an enemy, or even an opponent, really. But one was as unlikely as the other.

Peter still looked forlorn, so Thomas took his hand. It still struck him all anew with its strangeness, now and then, to have this form of comfort open to both of them; but he was beginning to forget it ever hadn’t been. Peter threaded his fingers through Thomas’s, holding on, and they sat that way for a few seconds, in the silence of touch.

*

They’d just about finished when Malini appeared; they were in the mundane library, no electronics being required for this particular task, and the door had swung mostly shut, a quirk of the Folly’s age. Malini made a great deal more noise opening it than was really necessary, even before she knocked to announce her presence formally. Apparently she wasn’t taking any chances. Thomas was both irked by this and couldn’t blame her at all.

She had a lead for them to follow up, based on her examination of the murder site yesterday and a little legwork – it was surprising how much _faster_ these things moved when it wasn’t just the two of them to manage everything. Thomas announced he’d accompany her. Frankly, he didn’t trust that Peter would have his full attention on the case. He’d expected disagreement – in the way that it was possible for Peter to disagree with him in front of one of the apprentices, anyway – but he didn’t get it.

“Any excuse to get away from this, right?” Peter said. “I’ll tidy this away and you can sign off on it when you get back, if that’s okay.”

“Will you be out of the Folly today?” Thomas asked, standing up.

Peter shrugged. “Not planning on it – unless Matt digs something up in HOLMES. He’s cross-checking the interview records.”

“Wow, still?” said Malini. “Bet he’s just thrilled.”

“Just think of it this way,” Peter said dryly. “Before you lot came along, there was one person to do everything you do, and that person was me. So you can imagine my immense sympathy at his plight.”

“Indeed,” said Thomas, who happened to know that Peter still had a terrible habit of cross-checking a lot of what the apprentices did on HOLMES in the early hours of the morning. It was his method of combating insomnia, paperwork without the paper. “I’ll see you in the garage, Malini.”

*

Malini was very quiet as they drove; Thomas was tempted to ask what was on her mind, but he had observed that generally wasn’t necessary with her. If she had a thought she wanted you to know, you were going to know it; if she didn’t, no amount of digging would get it out. She reminded Thomas rather of several boys he’d been at Casterbrook with, in an odd way – teammates at rugby, cheerful and loud, who would knock you clean off your feet on the field or be hit in turn and think nothing of it once the game was done. Who appeared to vocalise every thought that came to them – and perhaps not to have too many of those – but then had suddenly emerged with observations that must have been there all along. Things they had noticed and never said.

All of them had died in the war, one way or another, although if Thomas thought Hugh Oswald might have been something of the type – not that their time at Casterbrook had overlapped - and he’d made it back to England. Whole in body if not entirely in spirit.

“Did you have any apprentices before the war, sir?” Malini said abruptly as they were crossing Putney Bridge. “If – you don’t mind me asking.”

And that was a question that Peter hadn’t thought to ask him for a full five years; a touch more in awe of him, perhaps. Insomuch as Peter had ever been awed by anything. Maybe just more trusting, little though Thomas felt he’d earned it.

“I didn’t,” Thomas told her. “The entire training system was somewhat different, before – well, you’ve seen the school, of course, and then once we were out of school one learned on the job, but with a number of different teachers. I never had any particular master, myself, and most didn’t, unless they specialised in something or other. And then I was never much involved in teaching before the war – I worked with the Foreign Service and I simply wasn’t in the country frequently enough. So no, certainly not as I do now.”

“So Peter – Sergeant Grant was your first apprentice?” she asked. “And then Lesley May. And now the rest of us.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“Huh,” Malini said, and Thomas didn’t doubt she was contemplating his success rate; one apprentice graduated to mastery, one run off. “I guess I thought it was more of a Jedi/padawan thing. But you and Peter both teach us stuff, so.”

Thomas had no idea what she meant by that and didn’t bother to ask. It would only lead to more confusion. Although he could perhaps put the question to Peter, in private. By now Peter was reasonably good at sifting out the unnecessary details from these references and putting them in the relevant context.

“What did you mean to ask, Malini?” he said, because he was quite sure she was driving at _something_.

“I guess I was just wondering if…” she trailed off. “You know, never mind, sir.”

“Out with it, constable.”

“If you’d had any apprentices that had turned out – you know – _normally_ ,” she blurted out all at once; when Thomas glanced over at her she was looking out the window, but he could see her reflected in the glass and she was biting her lip.

It was, he had to admit, a _very_ fair question. Under the circumstances. Lesley off – doing whatever it was she did, and Peter and he – and Peter and he. It wasn’t the most promising of histories.

“That is, I didn’t mean to say,” she stumbled on when he didn’t reply immediately, “we all think – and it’s fine – and we like it at the Folly and Abigail told me I should just – and I don’t mean – it’s just a bit _weird_ , sir, sorry.”

It’s been a lot weirder for me, Thomas thought, and didn’t say. When he’d taken on Peter – and then Lesley, unexpectedly, but not unwelcome, no matter what she’d thought of it – that they might all be _here_ , ten years and more on, had never crossed his mind. And why should it have? It had been thoroughly implausible, then.

So had a second Great War, once, at least to many minds. And so had Ettersberg. And so had the return of magic, or Thomas himself beginning to age backwards, or the idea of an entire cabal of magicians trained under his nose, or –

Thomas’s entire life was a study in implausibility, so he tried not to make too much of it.

“Quite right, it is,” he said instead. “But I assure you that it is my fondest hope, and also Peter’s, that we get all four of you trained with rather fewer dramatics along the way.”

“Oh, really?” Malini sounded almost disappointed. “Because – I don’t know – him surviving being on top of a tower block mid-demolition, that’s a pretty good story.”

“Only if you weren’t there,” Thomas said quellingly, and he hadn’t even been there himself, just had to take those calls and try to drive back to London as fast as possible without killing himself or anyone else or lashing out at Varvara Tamonina or – it wasn’t an experience he cared to repeat.

Malini must not have read the report yet, he thought. Or she’d have known it was also the site of Lesley’s betrayal.

“Fair enough, boss,” Malini said. “But – I had another question? If it’s okay? It’s not about – um – anything – it’s a pretty boring one this time.”

“Go on, then,” Thomas sighed, because this was Malini, and he’d hear it sooner or later, and probably sooner.

“How did _you_ get chosen to be an apprentice? How did anyone, before the war?”

This he knew how to answer. “It was a profession, if you like – the same families sent sons to Casterbrook. Not the aristocracy, by and large, but the – bourgeoisie, as it were. We were only ten or eleven when we went, so there wasn’t much opportunity to test for character, I suppose. Though very few boys left without completing their education. Some never went further, became hedgewizards, did other things. But most of us went on. I suppose it was all we expected to do.”

“So basically being a wizard meant you’d been born to the right family, and you’d been a boy, and your parents decided for you,” she summarised.

“That’s how it was for me,” Thomas told her. “More or less.”

“And now it’s probationary constables,” she said, “and we got picked because – what did Peter say? We were smart enough to see the things that really weren’t there, and gullible enough to want to go looking for them.”

“Did he _really_?” Thomas said.

“Well, not when we got recruited,” said Malini. “A couple of months ago, at the pub. Matt asked.”

It did sound terribly like something Peter would say, Thomas had to admit.

“Do you think it’s going to work out better, though, sir?” she went on. “Than how it was before.”

“It can’t be how it was before,” Thomas said. “The Ministry of Education would never approve it. And, on the whole, I think that adults who go willingly into this can’t possibly do worse than children chosen before they had any real idea what they were being chosen for.”

His fellow wizards would likely have died, of course, in the war, a great many of them. Perhaps even most, by mischance. But that they’d died _en masse_ , died so horribly – that path had been laid for them before they had a chance to choose otherwise. It wasn’t, Thomas had thought when he’d carved all those names at Casterbrook, those long silent weeks, fair. It hadn’t been fair at all.

He hated what had happened to Lesley, and if it killed her, or God forbid if Peter got himself killed, it would hurt – but they’d known. They knew. And so had these new apprentices, Malini and the rest; they’d chosen.

“It’s just statistically it doesn’t look so good,” Malini said, but it sounded like a joke.

“Haven’t you been listening to anything Peter or Abdul say?” Thomas said. “You can’t reason from small samples. It’s not statistically valid. They say it quite a lot, if you hadn’t noticed.”

“Usually while metaphorically pulling their hair,” Malini agreed. “I guess we’re working on increasing the sample size, then. Getting a more accurate result.”

And that was a cheerful thought, or at least a cheering one – that Lesley and Peter were outliers, in the wider scheme of things. Not that he would change anything about Peter, not a thing, but it wasn’t a result that really _needed_ repeating. He’d change everything about Lesley, but that couldn’t be repeated, not in the same way. Hopefully not in any way.

He was stumbling through this as much as Peter ever had, but time was on his side these days, and the only way forward was through.

“We can only hope so,” Thomas told her. “We can only hope.”

*


End file.
